5 Ways to Improve Your SEO Ranking in 2018

How to Improve Your SEO Ranking

ranking2018.jpg

When looking to reach your audience, SEO is one of the most powerful tools. Click here to learn how to increase your SEO ranking this year.

SEO can put you in front of your target audience when they need your products the most.

To get the best results with SEO, you need to know what's working right now.

If you ignore current SEO trends and just stick to what worked in the past, you'll be left behind. You may even be penalized by Google for using outdated tactics that are now considering spammy.

The question is: what's working in 2018? Are there any new strategies to improve your SEO ranking this year? Keep reading to find out!

Produce High-Quality Content

The days of producing tons of content just for the sake of it are over. If you want to rank high in 2018, high-quality content is a must.

Follow these simple rules:

  • Cover the topic in-depth
  • Back up your claims with stats
  • Include graphics to help explain complex concepts

Remember, the goal isn't to produce content that has a high word count. After all, you don't want to just write 10,000 words of waffle.

Your goal should be to provide the best possible resource that currently exists for the topic in question.

When you're able to do this, your odds of ranking higher will increase.

Google will consider your content the best resource for someone who wants to learn about a certain topic, and will, therefore, rank it higher in search results.

Suppose someone is searching for advice, regarding the topic you've written about. If your content is the best out there for the topic in question, it's in Google's best interest to make it easier to find.

If you think that you're going to struggle with writing high-quality content, that's okay. Work with a freelance writer to make things easier.

A freelance writer who specializes in your topic of choice will provide engaging content. If you can't find any decent writers, approach companies like Loyal Dog Marketing to help with writing.

Reduce Page Load Times

Page load times are becoming a significant SEO ranking factor in 2018.

If you can reduce the amount of time it takes for your website to load, your search engine rankings will go up.

If Google is serving up websites that take a long time to load, the user experience will suffer.

Websites that load fast, on the other hand, provide a superior user experience. Customers are more likely to stay on a site that works well.

If you don't know how to improve your page speed, there is a free tool known as 'Page Speed Insights' that can help. It will let you know the current status of a particular page, and what you can do to improve loading speeds.

Some of the suggestions provided are easy to fix with a few WordPress plugins. Others require technical know-how, so you might need expert help.

If you don't consider yourself to be a tech-savvy, consider hiring someone to make these changes. They'll know exactly what to do and save you from the frustration that comes with writing code.

Build High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the oldest SEO ranking factors.

They still matter in 2018, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind. This is because there have been a few changes as to how Google judges the backlink profile of a website.

First, you need to focus on building high-quality backlinks.

High-quality backlinks are generally backlinks that aren't that easy to obtain. In general, the more challenging it is to gain a backlink, the more that Google will respect it.

Avoid low-quality links as much as possible. Never buy links from someone who is just going to spam the Internet with your URL. If you do engage in this sort of link building, your ranking will fall instead of rising.

In some cases, people may actually perform a malicious attack on your website. This is where they purposely spam your link everywhere, knowing that Google will penalize your website as a result.

If this happens to you, use something known as the Disavow tool. It will help you tell Google which links you want to ignore, so you can recover from 'spam attacks.'

You also want to make sure that you don't use too many backlinks that contain exact match anchor text.

Improve User Experience

Another thing that can improve your search engine ranking in 2018 is the user experience on your website.

There's reason to believe that Google is starting to account for something known as 'dwell time.' This is the amount of time that someone stays on your website before clicking the back button and going back to the search listings.

If your website provides a bad user experience, people are going to click on the back button right away.

Google will assume that your website isn't providing people with what they're looking for. As a result, your rankings will drop.

If you want to improve user experience, consult a web designer. He will know what changes need to be made so that your website doesn't turn people off. Plus, your SEO ranking will go up.

Build a brand

Google is now taking branded searches into account when it comes to search engine rankings.

If people are searching for the name of your website, Google will perceive it as being popular. To increase brand awareness, think about how you can make your website visible on online.

For instance, you can build up a large social media following. You might also want to be a guest on a few podcasts, which will lead to people searching your website in Google.

Boost Your SEO Ranking the Smart Way

Doing SEO the right way is definitely a challenge - especially when strategies change from one year to the next.

In this post, we've gone through the strategies that will improve your SEO ranking in 2018. Each can work well when used alone.

Do you want to learn more about how to boost your rankings? Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest news and updates!